H5N1, we can’t quit you!
Yes, with Covid firmly in the rearview mirror, Team Apocalypse has gone back to its old standby, the granddaddy of ‘em all, influenza.
Covid needed a refresh. Even long Covid is now a punchline. And from Team Apocalypse’s point of view, the flu has the great virtue of occasionally taking out someone who isn’t already terminally ill, 400 pounds, or 85 years old.
The problem in hyping the influenza threat is that those cases are quite rare, at least since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-19. The strains that have circulated ever since have either been far milder, or essentially unable to transmit between humans.
Still, the public health bureaucrats are trying. For months now, they have talked up the H5N1 “bird flu” strain (the numbers refer to the shapes of two crucial proteins on the influenza virus).
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The only interesting part of the H5N1 affair is the way epidemiologists and virologists are able to track in real time the different variants of the virus, and the trouble it is having adapting to humans, even with a massive reservoir of animal hosts.
It is almost as if respiratory viruses in the wild can have a difficult time crossing host species – and may not be well-adapted to further onward transmission in a new host when they do.
It is almost as if they leave telltale clues to their evolution that scientists are able to track in near-real-time. It is almost as if they don’t ever just explode from animal hosts into human populations so perfectly adapted that they barely mutate for a year – while spreading worldwide.
Yes, H5N1 is what viral evolution looks like when the virus hasn’t escaped from a Chinese lab where it’s been juiced with foolish and dangerous research. It is an object lesson on real zoonosis.
For that reason – if no other – let’s hope the virologists keep tracking it.